CARE International has called for reform of the international food aid system in advance of a meeting of world leaders in New York on the Millennium Development Goals (Hat tip: Giulio Quaggiotto). The report - Living on the Edge of Emergency - makes the very reasonable argument that more aid money ought to be spent helping prevent food disasters rather than simply responding to emergencies once they arise. This leads the authors of the report to strong words:
[A] radical and fundamental overhaul of the international aid system to enable timely and adequate funding, and end gaps and duplications, is the only hope for ending hunger and food emergency.
If we are to pin all our hopes of ending hunger in the world on this kind of overhaul, I'm afraid the poor will be waiting in vain. Perhaps the authors of the report should consider a key insight often attributed to Amartya Sen - famines simply don't occur in functioning democracies. (A small aside - Amartya Sen actually doesn't claim credit for this insight - check out video of the lecture titled The Foundations of Democracy - Practice: Functions and Assessment.)
This is not to say that the international aid system has no role to play. Functioning democracies can cooperate with aid agencies when disaster strikes (or threatens to strike) to head off a famine. While the authors of Living on the Edge of Emergency do mention the role of governments, they don't give it the central importance it deserves. Early on, they state that "[t]oo often national governments are slow to declare an emergency and call for necessary funds." Later they point out that "[n]ational social protection systems exist in only a few countries and are often at a scale that falls far short of the need." Both statements are true, but they don't get at the root of the problem - the complex set of relationships between democratic governments and functioning markets that prevent famine. Making aid the centerpiece of efforts to end hunger is quixotic, at best, considering the attention span of donor governments.
One final thing. Does anyone else find this sentence a bit confusing?
Once they are producing a surplus, farmers can benefit from rising food prices.
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